Pinball is certainly a precursor to video games; there's other low-impact games of manual dexterity like ring toss/bocce/..., darts/target shooting. Choose your own adventure books/pencil and paper role-playing/wargames obviously predate computer gaming -- the computer just runs a timer maybe and acts as the gamemaster.
People have been playing various forms of puzzle solitaire with cards for years; Bejewelled or whatever could be done with a custom deck. Minesweeper is not different in kind from the old logic game Mastermind. Even something like Tetris seems new, but I think is similar fundamentally to a tabletop game like Boggle: randomized input + a timer to find solutions -- the geometrical nature of Tetris is kinda just an implementation detail.
But I would venture that the number of problems that are only quantitatively different -- i.e., faster -- because of computers utterly dwarfs the number that are qualitatively different, or even impossible without them.
"Reality is the only place you can get a decent meal."
Video games are simulators of things in real life that are taken to extremes because death in the real world is permanent. They do impossible things - like fight aliens - but you can definitely fight using weapons (even airsoft or nerfed counts) in contrived situations in the real world. Imagine a cast of actors and you fight them with an airsoft rifle. No computer needed.
I know what you mean, but this is the wrongest thing I've seen in quite a while!
Because it ignores performance.
Try implementing a video game with human clerks.